But is it so bad that the Commissioner of the IRS deserves to be impeached? Let’s look at pro and con arguments.

Here’s some of what Bloomberg’s Al Hunt wrote about the controversy. He’s obviously a defender of the current Commissioner.

The specifics of any supposed impeachable offenses are vague. Koskinen, 76, is a respected, successful business and government executive who, at the behest of the White House, took on the job of cleaning up the beleaguered tax agency in December 2013, after offenses had been committed. …The accusations stem from 2013, when the IRS’s tax-exempt division was found to have disproportionately targeted conservative groups for scrutiny. Although Koskinen was brought in after the damage had been done, …Some, rather recklessly, accuse him of lying. …The specific charges seem specious: There may have been miscommunication, but there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Koskinen. …The pre-Koskinen abuses by the IRS’s tax-exempt division have been the subject of three inquiries… All were critical of IRS mismanagement, but none found any evidence of illegal activities or political direction from on high.

George Will is not so sanguine about Koskinen’s role. Here are excerpts from his column in the Washington Post.

Federal officials can be impeached for dereliction of duty (as in Koskinen’s failure to disclose the disappearance of e-mails germane to a congressional investigation); for failure to comply (as in Koskinen’s noncompliance with a preservation order pertaining to an investigation); and for breach of trust (as in Koskinen’s refusal to testify accurately and keep promises made to Congress). …After Koskinen complained about the high cost in time and money involved in the search, employees at a West Virginia data center told a Treasury Department official that no one asked for backup tapes of Lerner’s e-mails. Subpoenaed documents, including 422 tapes potentially containing 24,000 Lerner e-mails, were destroyed. For four months, Koskinen kept from Congress information about Lerner’s elusive e-mails. He testified under oath that he had “confirmed” that none of the tapes could be recovered. …Koskinen’s obfuscating testimonies have impeded investigation of unsavory practices, including the IRS’s sharing, potentially in violation of tax privacy laws, up to 1.25 million pages of confidential tax documents. …Koskinen consistently mischaracterized the Government Accountability Office report on IRS practices pertaining to IRS audits of tax-exempt status to groups.

These charges don’t seem (as Hunt asserted) to be “specious.”

That doesn’t mean, by the way, that there aren’t good (or at least adequate) responses to these accusations.

The IRS also is one ofthe worst offendersin the government’s asset-forfeiture racket, which arbitrarily steals money from law-abiding citizens.

The tax-collection bureaucracy has violated its own rules as part of a discriminatory and arbitrary persecution of Microsoft.

While the IRS slaps harsh penalties and interest payments on taxpayers who make inadvertent errors, the agency is seemingly incapable of preventing massive fraud against taxpayers, routinely sending checks to crooks and con artists milking the system forEITC paymentsand false refunds.

And the IRS (with help from negligent courts)routinely violateslegal protections and civil liberties of American citizens.

These horror stories provide plenty of evidence that the internal revenue service should have its wings clipped.

P.S. Since we’re criticizing the IRS, I can’t resist sharing some oldies but goodies.